Yan Lianke - The Four Books

The Child smiled at him. The sun was golden. Dense fog was swirling across the land. The courtyard reverberated with a sharp, piercing sound of a whistle summoning people to work the fields.

4. Heaven’s Child , pp. 43–48

The whistle blew, and the sound pierced the sky. Most people, however, dawdled in their houses. They didn’t carry their tools out to the field. Each brigade had two seed drills, but they remained stored under the eaves of the buildings. The rope used for pulling the drills was lying on the ground. The wheat seed distributed by the higher-ups was still sitting in bags in the doorway of each brigade.

The people washing clothes continued washing their clothes.

The people writing letters continued writing their letters.

Those with nothing to do just squatted there in the sun.

They all went to look for the Child, saying that no one was going to the fields, and asking who had the ability to produce six hundred jin of grain from a single mu of land?

The Child looked at the Theologian, the Scholar, and the Musician — they had just come out of their rooms, and then had gone back inside — and he softly uttered three simple words:

“Call a meeting.”

So they called a meeting.

Everyone crowded in front of the Child, sitting with their respective brigades. The Child silently took out a document, then asked one of the young people from Re-Ed to read it. The Child said, “Whoever reads this document will be exempt from work tomorrow, and instead will go to town to mail this letter and bring back whatever packages and other mail are waiting there.” As a result, two young people began jockeying to read the letter, and the Child picked one of them. There was not much in the document — it merely announced which books were permitted in Re-Ed. After the document was read, the Child was silent for a moment, then asked loudly, “Did you all hear? These are the books you may read. If a book wasn’t mentioned, then reading it will be considered a crime.”

“Now, I know what books you are reading, and where you are hiding them,” the Child said as he paced back and forth. “There are some people who read reactionary books while in the bathroom, and others who wake up in the middle of the night to read them, sobbing.” The Child suddenly stopped pacing and pointed to the two youngsters who both had wanted to read the document. “Not only will you have the day off tomorrow to go into town to deliver and pick up the mail; next year each of you will have three days to go visit your families.” The Child added, “But you must do as I say. Go to the second brigade, where the Scholar has hidden a reactionary book under his pillow.”

So they went to look, and found a reactionary book titled The Seven Sages of Wei and Jin .

The Child said, “Go look at the comforter belonging to the Theologian from the third brigade. The comforter cover has a zipper. Unzip it and see what’s inside.”

So they went to look, and at the head of the Theologian’s bed they found his neatly folded comforter. Inside, there was a copy of the Old Testament. The book had a black cover, and every page had been read over and over again, and had marks from fingers moistened with saliva.

The Child said, “Go check under the bed of the Author in the fourth brigade, where he has hidden three wooden boxes. The boxes are all full of books.”

So they went to look, and found the three wooden boxes. They pulled out the boxes, threw the clothes to the ground, then dumped the books. There were copies of Wild Grass and Laws of the Tang and Song , as well as foreign works such as Le Père Goriot, Don Quixote , Mallarmé’s collected poetry, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet , Dickens’s David Copperfield , and so forth, together with Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther . The books were old and tattered, and were written in traditional Chinese characters. The curious thing is that while the Author’s own novels were all about China, the books he secretly read turned out to be from abroad.

They removed dozens of works from the three boxes and piled them on the ground, making a small mound.

The Child’s gaze came to rest on the Musician. Her face was as white as a sheet of paper, as white as snow, as white as fog. The Musician was sitting in the very back of the crowd. Everyone else turned around to look at her. The Musician lowered her head, and the Child turned his gaze elsewhere, to an overweight, middle-aged professor. He said, “You told the higher-ups that you don’t return home on weekends, and instead you go to the theater and watch old costume dramas. You claim that only in this way can you be productive. But all of the books you have hidden under your pillow are old thread-bound volumes. There is one that is particularly lewd and reactionary. It’s called Story of the Stone . I hear that you’ve even memorized all the poems in it.”

He then pointed to a thin woman, and said, “You wrote a letter to the highest of the higher-ups in the capital, saying that the current higher-ups are all bad. But you are not bad, and in your drawer there are no books. Instead, there is a lot of foreign candy. Every month your family sends you a package of clothing, and hidden inside each shipment there is a jin of candy. Every day, you wake up, go to work, then return to your room. Before bed, you secretly eat some candy. Every day, you eat at least five pieces, meaning each month you eat at least a hundred and fifty pieces. Did you know that most of the nation’s people have never seen a piece of imported candy in a foreign wrapper?”

The Child appeared to be omniscient. Wherever he claimed someone had hidden books, there turned out to be books; and wherever he claimed people had hidden valuables, there turned out to be valuables. The Child stood before the crowd, and as he was speaking he kept kicking the growing pile of books. The pile rose higher and higher until it was like a small mountain, and the Child walked around it from the back to the front. The sun shone onto the pile. Dust motes flickered, dancing in the light. Everyone was pale with fear. With a look of astonishment, they stared at the Child as though he were a deity. They stared at the deity. They stared at that deity. Birds were flying overhead, and as their feathers floated down, rustling in the wind, the Child picked one up and examined it, then threw it aside and said loudly,

“I won’t continue with this. You and I both know where you have hidden your books, as does God above. Everyone must go retrieve those reactionary books you shouldn’t be reading, and hand them over. In this way everything will be resolved.”

Everyone went back to their houses to retrieve those books that they ordinarily read. Most of them did this voluntarily, and the crowd became very animated. Others initially hesitated, but they too scurried away when the Child glared at them. The Musician was about to go look for her books, but the Child turned to her and said, “You don’t have any books, and therefore don’t need to get them.”

The Musician sat back down facing the Child, so that she might have a good memory of him.

Everyone went home. Only the Musician stayed behind.

They brought their books as though they were old shoes, and tossed them onto the pile. The pile grew higher. The sun was also higher. The pile grew bigger, and the sun also grew bigger. The musty smell of the books’ paper wafted out, mixing with the scent of the autumn fields.

The pile of books grew larger and larger.

The pile of books grew larger still, until it was like a towering mountain.

The Child grabbed several volumes, including Call to Arms, Faust , and The Hunchback of Notre Dame , and lit them on fire. He took a copy of The Phenomenology of Spirit , and set it on fire. He took copies of The Divine Comedy and Strange Tales of the Liao Zhai Studio , and set them on fire as well. The Child burned many books. As he was about to burn Balzac’s novels, however, he threw them back onto the pile. And when he was about to burn Tolstoy’s novels, he also tossed them onto the pile. He tossed back a copy of Crime and Punishment , and said to those two youngsters, “Keep these, and take them all to my house. I can burn them in the winter to keep warm.”